Brain Injury

People stumble over the name.

Sometimes I stumble over the name.

BestGuessistan.

It doesn’t glide off the tongue. It’s clunky. Awkward. A little broken.

Exactly.

That’s not a branding blunder.

Not one of those names a company spends decades apologizing for.

It’s not incorrect — it’s intentional. Very intentional.

That’s the lived experience.

Because life after rupture — after a brain injury, a diagnosis, a breakdown, a crack-up — is all awkward.

The smoothness is gone, replaced by rough surfaces and struggle.

Things that used to be effortless now require planning. Coordination. Prep.

Extensive prep. A checklist.

Even speaking. Even being.

Before, I could talk my way through anything.

Any word, thought, quote, or reference was within easy reach.

Like silk off a spool, as Thornton Wilder says in Our Town.

Now, I rehearse. I pause. I hunt for the word that used to live right there, on the tip of my brain.

Sometimes my speech sounds halting.

I hear it before my listeners do.

And with every pause, I’m reminded: the old fluency is gone.

This is the after-you.

BestGuessistan slows you down. Makes you work for it.

Just like I have to work for everything now.

It’s not slick.

It’s not optimized.

It’s accurate.

That name is a mouthful — and so is living like this.

Welcome to BestGuessistan.

Try again, slowly. You’ll get there.

Join me.

The water’s not fine.

But it’s where we live now.#TraumaticBrainInjury #Recovery

Just published something I’ve been working toward for a while: a travel guide to the soft, strange place your brain goes after a burnout, breakdown, or brain injury.

It’s called 36 Hours in BestGuessistan.

A satirical field guide for the newly rewired—where the signage is gentle, the coffee is strong, and metaphors are the local currency.

It’s funny, yes. But it’s also real.

Hope it brings a smile, or maybe just a little exhale.

WendyLC | Substack #TraumaticBrainInjury #Recovery #ChronicIllness

For anyone who’s lost the structure that used to define you—this one’s for you.

After my brain injury, I expected physical symptoms. I didn’t expect the identity collapse.

This piece is about what happens when you’re no longer being watched, graded, evaluated—or applauded.

And how scary that space can be.

Relieved. Adrift.

Before my brain injury, I moved fast.

Solved problems before people could finish describing them.

I thought that speed was my superpower.

Until it broke me.

I wrote this piece about what happened after—and how I had to rebuild not just my mind, but my whole way of being.

...And?

How I lived in allegro—and learned to survive in lento.

📝 ...And?

If this feels familiar to you, I’d love to know. It’s lonely work, sometimes.

#I wrote something recently about the strange, frustrating experience of living inside a brain that no longer lets you say what you mean. The noise, the loss of precision, the inability to be understood—or even to understand yourself.

It’s called Your Brain Has Left the Chat, and if that resonates for anyone here, I wanted to share:

👉 Your Brain Has Left the Chat

Sending understanding to everyone navigating this. You’re not alone.

I said I had a headache. Every day. A daily headache. The cadence was correct, but the rest wasn’t. “Headache” made me sound functional. Like someone you could offer Advil to.

The problem was language itself.

The original sin was the brain injury. But then the problem became language. My brain wasn’t working the same way, and the part that explains things was also damaged.

Language for pain has always failed. It’s a white whale. I had inadequacy stacked on inadequacy. So I made up a word: headpain. Not headache. Not trauma. Not static terms. Just: headpain. A hum, a throb, a shutdown. An endless, structureless dissonance.

It felt like being full of noise. Not sound—noise. Hissing, screeching neurons glitching out. Fridge motors triggered flinches like firecrackers. Sometimes I felt underwater. Other times, jagged sparks of sensation.

I used to live in language. English major. Linguistics grad school. Former CMO. I wrote thought leadership. I made things mean things. I was proud of that.

Then suddenly, everything meant nothing. I lost words mid-sentence. I couldn’t hold thoughts in my head. The worst part: I remembered what it used to be like.

I had watched my father, late in Alzheimer’s, struggle for words. I saw his frustration. I felt it later in myself.

Except I passed. I could still say “I’m fine.” I could still mask. I wore dark glasses indoors. No one expected much. There was grace. I gave myself none.

That’s the noise: not volume but distortion. Misfires. Glitches. Knowing what you want to say and losing it in transit. The panic of not being able to speak what you feel.

Pain language is useless: sharp, dull, throbbing, stabbing. None of it fit. I was trying to explain a full-body system crash with a box of crayons.

So I used stand-ins: “headache.” “tired.” “overstimulated.” They weren’t true. Just shapes.

People took me literally. Thought I meant what those words usually mean. They didn’t know I was walking around inside a howling, flickering error code. And I didn’t know how to tell them.

Because the words didn’t exist. And even if they had, I wasn’t sure anyone would believe me.

That’s the cruelty of brain injury: it messes not just with what you know, but with how you know. And how you say what you know.

The world saw me as competent. I could still string a sentence. I still sounded “fine.” I wasn’t. I was glitching.

So I wrote. Alone, in a dark office, with a desk lamp and a half bottle of Albariño. I started, not for clarity or for an audience, but to tell myself: I’m still here.

The noise didn’t stop. It hasn’t. But writing gave it shape. Shape is salvation. It has edges. It takes up space in the world.

I couldn’t silence the noise. But I could name it. And in naming it, I made space for others to hear the truth buried inside.#TraumaticBrainInjury #ChronicIllness

#PTSD
#ChronicIllness
#hopeless
#PTSDSupportAndRecovery
#braindamage
#Anxiety
#EMDRtherapyhorror
#Flashbacks
#ChildhoodSexualAbuse
#TraumaticBrainInjury
#losinghope
#Exhaustedfromfighting
#ChronicPain
#BrainInjury

How am I supposed to keep going, when I have no hope left?
Because of doctors refusing to listen, my quality of life has been taken away from me.
Because of a psychiatrist who forced me to remember being raped when I was 9 years old, I have been reliving those rapes over and over again since 2019
She did the 4th stage of EMDR Therapy to me without explaining anything about EMDR therapy.
She put a crack in the wall I built when I was a kid to force myself to forget 💯.
That wall began to crumble away, and the memories became longer and more detailed as time went on, until they became actual flashbacks.
Literally reliving being raped by him over and over again since 2019.
I filed a complaint with the State Medical Board of Ethics and Professional Services about it, and explaining everything she did.
They have powerful lawyers, and I don't.
Those lawyers used my brain damage against me, and twisted everything I explained and made it look like it didn't happen.
The State Board closed my case, and decided that she didn't violate Ethics laws, completely ignored everything I explained.
They ignored multiple requests to call me so I could explain anything better.
I am NEVER going to stop reliving being raped by him until she tells the truth about what she did, and is punished accordingly by the State Medical Board.
I need her to tell the truth about what she did, so I can start to heal.
What am I supposed to do to get her to tell the truth when I don't have any money to hire a lawyer to help me?
How am I going to start to recover from the damage I'm going through?

I never intended to build a survival system. It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t designed. I stumbled into it piece by piece as life demanded it.

Before my brain injury, I had outlets. Movement. Baking. Music. Writing. They were hobbies. Joyful distractions. After my injury, they became something else entirely: survival tools.

Movement grounded me. Walking my dog, stretching, the familiar ache of muscles waking up—it reset my nervous system when nothing else could.

Baking became both meditation and therapy. Pastry taught me precision and control when everything felt chaotic. Bread taught me patience and surrender when I tried too hard to force order onto the mess.

Music shifted from important to vital. Listening cut through the noise. Learning guitar gave me back mastery, focus, and the strange comfort of being a beginner again. I showed up. I played. I practiced. I repeated. It became ritual.

And writing—writing holds all of it together. It stopped being work and became the way I made meaning out of chaos. It let me explain my new life to myself and to others. It gave structure to the formlessness.

This is my survivor’s toolkit. The tools aren’t perfect. They don’t fix me. But they keep me moving, grounded, and connected. They remind me I am still here. Still capable. Still myself—even if that self has changed.

I believe we all build our own toolkits without realizing it, piecing together whatever keeps us going when life tilts off-axis.

What’s in yours? #BrainInjury #ChronicIllness

The rain pelts.

The brain fog rolls in.

My dog is sitting on my feet like I might float away.

I’m here. Still standing. (Wobbling slightly.)

I live with a brain injury and all the messy, unpredictable chaos that comes with it. Some days I conquer my mind. Some days my mind conquers me.

Hello from the land of “conquer your mind… eventually.”

Anyone else trying to win the daily battle?

I am rated 100 for PTSD and TBI. I was considered in default of my Student Loan due to the pause in payments. Before that I had been making standard payments. They told me that they would start to garnish my disability check without providing them the waiver.
Because I am total and permanent I can get a waiver to forgive the amount left. On top of that waiver I should have had it discharged due to Federal Service for 15 years with the VA.
Problem is I am unable to navigate the beurocracy of it with my TBI condition. I wish I had help. It's what my Social Worker is supposed to help with however doesn't know what to do. #Veteran #BrainInjury #PTSD #Anxiety #Depression